Trump grants interview to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg despite Signal chat bombshell, past criticism
For years, President Donald Trump has blasted politically damaging reporting by The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg as fake, made-up.
His most recent criticism has been over Goldberg's bombshell story about a Signal chat he was accidentally invited to, one that included top members of Trump's national security team, conversing about an impending military attack on Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
Now, in a surprise twist, Trump said he would speak face-to-face with Goldberg on Thursday after claiming on Truth Social that Goldberg, along with The Atlantic writers Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, would sit down with him for an interview.
"The story they are writing, they have told my representatives, will be entitled, "The Most Consequential President of this Century," he said.
Goldberg and The Atlantic have not commented about Trump's post or the alleged meeting as of Thursday afternoon.
Although the president claimed Goldberg was "responsible for many fictional stories about me," he said he is looking forward to the meeting.
"I am doing this interview out of curiosity, and as a competition with myself, just to see if it's possible for The Atlantic to be 'truthful,'" Trump posted. "Are they capable of writing a fair story on 'TRUMP'? The way I look at it, what can be so bad."
Goldberg and Trump have had a contentious back-and-forth going since the president's 2016 campaign, when the journalist criticized Trump's rhetoric.
"At the very least, he traffics in racial invective knowingly. To me, that's a threshold question. If you do that and if you know what you're doing then, yes, you're a racist. I think he's a racist," he said in a 2016 NPR interview.
Trump criticized The Atlantic's coverage of his campaign and first term, but things heated up in 2020 after Goldberg wrote an article that described a 2018 incident in which president reportedly refused to visit an American cemetery in France where World War I service members were buried.
"Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers," Trump told his advisers, according to the article. It also said Trump called fallen Marines "suckers."
The president heatedly denied he had used those terms on what was then Twitter and went after Goldberg's sources. Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, later confirmed Goldberg's account in an interview with CNN.
In Trump's Thursday post, he brought up that story and claimed it was a "made-up HOAX."
Goldberg became the target of the president's ire again last month after he revealed he was inadvertently invited to the Signal chat that consisted of several top U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, in which they discussed plans for the March 15 military attack against Houthis in Yemen ahead of the airstrike occurring.
Trump and White House officials slammed Goldberg, claiming his reporting was biased.
"He is, as you know, is a sleaze bag, but at the highest level. His magazine is failing," Trump said of Goldberg on March 26 during an appearance on the "VINCE Show" podcast.
Goldberg has repeatedly defended his reporting on the scandal.
"They've decided to blame the guy who they invited into the conversation. It's a little bit strange behavior," he told ABC News in March. "Honestly, I don't know why they're acting like this except to think that they're -- they know how serious a national security breach it is. And so they have to deflect it and push it onto the guy, again, they invited into the chat -- namely me."
